Pa. prof uses tech to authenticate Lincoln works

PITTSBURGH -- Abraham Lincoln's youthful proclivity for penning epistles to a weekly newspaper anonymously and under pseudonyms are the stuff of a modern-day computer-aided paper chase.

Patrick Juola, a computer science professor at Duquesne University, is using a computer program based on stylometry -- the study of an individual's unique writing characteristics -- to authenticate those possible early Lincoln writings for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill.

Working in the Evaluating Variations in Language computer lab of Duquesne's Fisher Hall, Juola taps a computer keyboard to compare copies of digitized letters Lincoln is believed to have penned against works confirmed written by the 16th president.

Daniel Stowell, director of the Lincoln Papers Project in Springfield, said scholars have grappled for decades with authenticating a collection of anonymous letters and documents signed in pen names.

The letters date from the time Lincoln was about 25 until he was 33, a period when he was a relatively unknown state assemblyman.

"It would be wonderful with this technology to confirm those we're suspicious were his or even confirm new things he wrote," Stowell said.